Averted Eyes Quotes & Sayings

Tentatively she curled an arm around his neck and relaxed against him as she held the lantern to light their way.
He was silent as he climbed the stairs with her, and though she kept her gaze averted, she could feel his eyes on her. In a few moments they were in the corridor leading from the wing, and with unerring direction, he turned down the hall toward her bedchamber.
Erienne was most observant of that fact and remembered the night he had paused outside her door.
"You seem to know your way quite well through this house. Even the way to my chamber."
"I know where the lord's chambers are and that you're using them," he replied, meeting her gaze.
"I don't think I'll ever feel safe in this house again," she replied with more truth than sarcasm.
A devilish grin gleamed back at her.
-Erienne & Christopher — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Her family half carried Terri Weedon back down the royal blue carpet, and the congregation averted its eyes. — J.K. Rowling

She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. For a moment, he knew that gaze intimately, remembering it from a time long gone. The ache of a shattered belief once known. He knew that feeling. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

But when Bethany came into class, her dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail, showing off her graceful neck, he may have stopped breathing again. A thousand charming words strung together in his head in a nanosecond, but he averted his eyes to his empty notebook. Notes? Who really took notes in class? Dawson wanted to see if she would talk to him first. God, he was like a teenage girl. He was so screwed. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

When the world uncovers some dark disguise,
Embrace the darkness with averted eyes. — Thomas Ligotti

No one could hear them over the carriage wheels, yet somehow it felt right to whisper. His eyes dropped to her gaping bodice. One nipple was reddened and still moist. He averted his eyes, swallowing. His erection, silly thing, didn't know the show was over. — Elizabeth Hoyt

A woman with eyes only for one person, or with eyes always averted from him, creates exactly the same impression. — Jean De La Bruyere

At that moment of love, a moment when passion is absolutely silent under omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, pure seraphic Marius, would have been more capable of visiting a woman of the streets than of raising Cosette's dress above the ankle. Once on a moonlit night, Cosette stopped to pick up something from the ground, her dress loosened and revealed the swelling of her breasts. Marius averted his eyes. — Victor Hugo

A thousand charming words string together in his head in a nanosecond, but he averted his eyes to his empty notebook. Notes? Who really took notes in class? Dawson wanted to see if she would talk to him first.
God, he was like a teenage girl. He was so screwed.
Bethany slid around in her chair, pulling one leg up against her chest. She twirled a pen in her right hand. "Hey, Dawson."
She. Spoke. To. Him. First. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Jocelyn put out her hand, took Luke's, and kissed the back of it lightly. Clary averted her eyes. Her mother turned back to her a moment later. "God, the Clave - if only they would listen." She blew out a frustrated breath. "Clary, we understand why you did what you did last night, but we thought you were safe. Then Helen showed up on our doorstep and told us you'd been injured in the Citadel battle. I nearly had a heart attack when we found you in the square. Your lips and fingers were blue. Like you'd drowned. If it hadn't been for Magnus - " "Magnus healed me? What's he doing here, in Alicante? — Cassandra Clare

I freeze when I come face to face with a naked man's chest. Why does this keep happening to me? Trying to keep my eyes averted from his very naked lower regions, I look up. — Dannielle Wicks

Death, of course, like chastity, admits of no degree; a man is dead or not dead, and a man is just as dead by one means as by another; but it is infinitely more horrible and revolting to see a man shattered and eviscerated, than to see him shot. And one sees such things; and one suffers vicariously, with the inalienable sympathy of man for man. One forgets quickly. The mind is averted as well as the eyes. It reassures itself after that first despairing cry: "It is I!"
"No, it is not I. I shall not be like that."
And one moves on, leaving the mauled and bloody thing behind: gambling, in fact, on that implicit assurance each one of us has of his own immortality. One forgets, but he will remember again later, if only in his sleep. — Frederic Manning

At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink
I averted my eyes
— Edgar Allan Poe

She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She, who hid in the crowd, who didn't want anyone to see her behind her veil of averted eyes and aloofness. When I stepped forward, she came out, too. And she pointed and said, revealing a child's wanton smile: "That's the one I want." And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away. There was no way to refuse. This, from a beautiful girl that I was already deeply, viscerally attracted to. Things were getting good. — Qiu Miaojin

An air of anticipation hung over the lab. The pied crow - whose name, according to Tasha, was Pitch, and who had been raised in captivity, bouncing from wildlife center to wildlife center before winding up living in my sister's private aviary - gripped her perch stubbornly with her talons and averted her eyes from the screen, refusing to react to the avatar that was trying to catch her attention. She'd been ignoring the screen for over an hour, shutting out four researchers and a bored linguist who was convinced that I was in the middle of some sort of creative breakdown. All — Elizabeth Bear

When you look at fainted stars, you'll notice that they often appear brighter from the corner of your eye. Averted vision, we call it.
Same with the answers you seek, you won't find them by staring until your eyes fall out.
They'll come when you're look somewhere else. — Jeri Smith-Ready

marked New Carrolton just about to close its doors, and did another jump-roll between them, once again - you guessed it - landing on the same shoulder. It felt as if it were attached to my body by two painful threads, and it pulsed like the rhythm track at a nightclub. I was sitting on the floor, wincing and making very awful, howl-and-screech-type noises, all of which would have drawn considerable attention in many other venues. However, this was the Washington, DC subway. Several people stared, but not for long. They averted their eyes as I rose and looked around, all dreadfully afraid that I might do something to them. Did I mention that my shoulder hurt like hell? If I didn't, then I should, and even if I did, I should probably emphasize it. Because it was practically all I could think of. I could just feel the blood rushing into it, but I didn't want to examine it, for fear that I might — Dale Wiley

But with Naseem and me, it was like we had never known each other at all. It's a cruel, skewered ecosystem in which a high school student exists. I'm not trying to justify it. Things that at the time seem entirely logical, defensible even, can make a person years later ashamed. Not necessarily of acts one has perpetrated, but omissions of basic decency. Averted eyes, abruptly ended conversations, unextended offers to include. Such things are scythes across the backs of even the most normal teens. And Naseem, it was generally acknowledged, was not your most normal teen. — Ron Parsons

Clothes were scattered across the floor in piles, a duffel bag open on the floor as if it had exploded. Isabelle's bright silver-gold whip hung from one bedpost, a lacy white bra from another. Simon averted his eyes. The curtains were drawn, the lamps extinguished.
Isabelle flopped down on the edge of the bed and looked at him with bitter amusement. A blushing vampire. Who would have guessed. — Cassandra Clare

Their religion is of the strictest sort, Stephen. Almost everything is forbidden to them except carpets." Stephen watched them as they went mournfully about the market, these men whose mouths were perpetually closed lest they spoke some forbidden word, whose eyes were perpetually averted from forbidden sights, whose hands refrained at every moment from some forbidden act. It seemed to him that they did little more than half-exist. They might as well have been dreams or ghosts. In the silent town and the silent countryside only the hot wind seemed to have any real substance. Stephen felt he would not be surprized if one day the wind blew the town and its inhabitants entirely away. — Susanna Clarke

Anya looked back to see a massive man standing by the fire. He had dark skin and black hair that fell to his waist. He had the deep amber eyes of a wolf and was naked. She averted her eyes. Maybe Yvan was right, maybe she really did have a problem with nakedness. — Amy Kuivalainen

There are rumors that your Lantsov prince has been sighted."

I drifted nearer, trying to keep my voice casual. "Where?"

He glanced up, his lips curling in a slight smile. "Do you like him?"

"Does it matter?"

"It's harder when you like them. You mourn them more."

"Tell me, Alina," said the Darkling. "Has he claimed you yet?"

"Claimed me? Like a peninsula?"

"No blushes. No averted eyes. How you've changed. What about your faithful tracker? Will he sleep curled at the foot of your throne? — Leigh Bardugo

Toffs?" Jack kept his eyes averted from his — Connie Brockway

(...) and its crush of suited people, men and women both, all with the averted eyes and vacant faces of lifelong servants. People who see only what they're paid to see. — Margaret Atwood

The city was new again, and newly dangerous, and I would walk the streets quickly, eyes averted from those of passersby, like a spy in the employ of lust and happiness, carrying the secret deep within me but always on the tip of my tongue. — Michael Chabon

Crowds are the most difficult thing for me these days because I have to walk with my head down and my eyes averted. There's still that part of me that wants to hold my head up, make eye contact and smile. — Cameron Diaz

Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted. — Aeschylus

I'm not your pet project anymore. I don't fucking need you to help me adjust because let's face it ... I'm doing just fine here. I've played by all your silly rules. I eat with my fucking utensils, and I don't go around killing people on a whim. I understand your rules, and nothing about this world freaks me out. And I was tired of fucking hiding what we have. Do you know how much it kills me not to be able to touch you when I want, or to keep my eyes averted for fear someone might guess that were fucking each other? I was sick of it, and I'm glad I did it, and I'd do it again. So be pissed at me if you want, but I'm fucking the remaining bitterness out of you tonight. — Sawyer Bennett

It was a Friday morning, and Walmart was populated only by the occasional mom with very young children and the random senior citizen, which made my bathroom makeover less conspicuous. Only one woman came in while I stood in front of the mirror, and she went straight to the toilets. I made sure that when she came out I was no longer standing in front of the mirror but was huddled with my palms stretched out beneath a loud hand dryer, my face completely averted. No one expects to see a celebrity in their local Walmart bathroom. Most of us don't really look at each other anyway. Our eyes glance off without really registering what we're seeing. It's human nature. It's polite society. Ignore each other unless someone is grotesquely fat or immodestly dressed or disfigured in some way - and then we pretend not to see, but we see everything. I was none of those things, and so far human nature was working in my favor. — Amy Harmon

If there's any T and A in view, you had better," I cleared my throat as his knuckles brushed my collarbone, his lips beginning to suckle at my neck, "keep your eyes averted if you're wanting to keep them." "I like my eyes right where they are." He sighed softly. "On the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. — Scarlett Dawn

We cannot hope to control what we do not understand, nor to confront our adversary, war, with our eyes averted. — Carl Mydans

Keltner even says that if he had to choose his mate by asking a single question at a speed-dating event, the question he would choose is: "What was your last embarrassing experience?" Then he would watch very carefully for lip-presses, blushing, and averted eyes ... "Embarrassment reveals how much the individual cares about the rules that bind us to one another ... It's better to mind too much than to mind too little. — Susan Cain

Carla might recognize herself in the lean girls against the bar, the girls in slender-cut suits with silver rings on each finger and thumb who looked so compact and secretive, so much as if all their essences were perfectly locked and kept, and only if you managed to please them could you unlock their fingers and pry them out. They smelled of a different perfume, they never quite met your eyes except in a swift and thorough appraisal whose conclusion you became aware of immediately when their eyes averted without the longed-for approving smile. You longed to go with them to secret apartments in the suburbs or condos on the lakeshore and there have their fingers brush down your back and have their maroon mouths kiss your thighs. — Dionne Brand

Hanging back to get her reaction under control, she wiped her knife on the edge of her petticoat, then angled her body away so she could raise her skirts enough to slip the knife into its sheath, taking care not to drop the pilfered food cradled in her other arm. When she straightened, she expected Darius and Jacob to be well ahead but instead found her companions only a few yards away, their far-too-curious eyes riveted on her. "So that's where you keep it." Darius's attention dropped to a spot halfway down her skirt. "I had wondered." Nicole lifted her chin. "Yes, well, I tried carrying it around in one of those lacy little reticules, but it kept getting tangled in the ribbons. Not very practical." Keeping her eyes averted from Darius's face, she marched past the gawkers and headed for the house. — Karen Witemeyer

Although I'd had no trouble looking at the casket the day before, on that Saturday I did my best to keep my eyes averted. I stared instead at the stained-glass window behind the altar and imagined shooting the panes out with a slingshot. — William Kent Krueger

I averted my eyes, looked around, and stumbled through all the faces in the room till they finally rested on his. He was standing like a scared bird, waving one wing and using the other to hide his scar. Aya Rabah- Scars — Refaat Alareer